“Don’t you admit there are some lines we have to draw?”
No. Next dumb question...
Unelected bureaucrats will not be emperors in their own personal fiefdoms.
Let felons have their guns. They carry them anyway, plus this might get Louisiana to reform its prisons and sentencing laws.
Give the future (current trend?) possibility of thought crimes, I'm not sure that being a felon would necessarily make one and poor risk for gun ownership.
For the grat majority of our history, EVERYONE had the right to own a firearm. The 1968 Gun Control Act, as translated from a German Nazi law, changed that.
Same thing in California if there was no gun in the felony -
and usually if they are searching for drugs in the house and they find the weapons, = probable cause.
My experience in New York State and California involving drug dealers is a warrant search for drugs and weapons, but if neither is involved in the felony, they do not search the house and seize the weapons.
There are people here that have been convicted for non-weapon non-drug felonies but the weapons are still there after he got released from prison coz he has his 30-06 and other rifles he uses for hunting and the local cops do not bother him...
The origin of this law predates the Constitution as the govt was not allowed to seize the weapons of a released felon because his family would starve in wintertime for lack of game meat-
PRECEDENT+ ,
fundamental right means they have to have due process to take the right away.
Interesting case. FWIW, I’m no fan of taking away the right to bear arms from convicted felons, at least those who are not in prison. To me these sort of laws beg a more fundamental question: if this person is so dangerous that we have to make it a crime of their merely touching a gun, then why pray tell are they out of prison in the first place?
Another implication that probably hasn’t been litigated yet is that the state of Louisiana would apparently no longer be able to require a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Or be able to regulate the types of firearms possessed.
That article is alarmist and pointless, the author concocts imaginary issues where there really are none.
Consider that it is utterly, completely, totally immaterial whether or not a state-level law prohibits convicted felons from owning firearms. A state-level law will not, and can not, change the federal prohibition against this.
Any person harping on about a state constitutional provision that supposedly grants felons gun rights is either so amazingly ignorant that he or she shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the first place, or is simply making hyperbolic comments in order to rile up the ignorant and easily swayed fools that make up the low-information-voter block.
Most of the other issues raised in the article are equally absurd and unfounded.
I assume reference is made to convicted felons that have served or satisfied the sentences or fines imposed by a court of law; i.e., have paid their debt to society.
If such be the case, for what reason are they described as convicted felons? I have not been able to understand why a citizen that had paid the penalty imposed for a felonious offense should for the rest of his/her live be denied possession of a firearm for defense of self and others. This is particularly unreasonable, in my opinion, when the felonious act was not one of physical, life-threatening or lethal violence against a person.
Felon restrictions should only be for violent crimes and/or those involving a firearm. “Misuse it, and you lose it” is not unconstitutional, especially when a person deliberately misused a tool that - let’s not kid ourselves, folks - is built from the ground up to intimidate or kill a human being.
But denying 2nd Amendment rights to, say, someone who’s crimes were all white-collar and would barely swat a bee in self-defense is just ludicrous.
I have always thought that after being released a felon, after set amount of time has passed, should be allowed to have firearms just like anyone else. If you don’t think they are “rehabilitated” don’t let them out.
What if you don’t have health insurance and don’t pay the penalty? Felony?